Everybody's Mother and Everybody's Father

Everybody’s mother and everybody’s father

coalesced collectively into a single couple

who spent most of the past hour sitting warily

across from me. The pent-up force of all that

parenthood against my fragile lone experience,

now only dimly recollected, of whatever it had

meant to have a daddy and a mommy didn’t

bode too awfully well. I mean, come on now!

Damn and hell! Here I was with this odd cosmos

of progenitors all crammed into a lady and a man.

What was I supposed to do? Finally I’d had it.

I said “shoo!” And “scram!” Which evidently

indicated we had adequately ended the exam.

They evanesced into a trillion billion quantum-

tiny particles of brilliant glow and quit the show.

I’ve never been so happy to see anybody go.

.